Biomedical Science Student Tracy Tauro Earns First Place at Undergraduate Research Symposium

On Saturday October 14, Tracy Tauro ’18 presented her research at the 20th Annual Undergraduate Research Conference in the Chemical and Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. For her poster presentation, titled “in silico exploration of the mechanism of translesion synthesis by DinB, ” Tauro earned first place honors in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The judges were impressed by the quality of her research and the clarity of her exposition and urged her to continue her research career. This highly competitive undergraduate poster competition drew over 250 students from 45 universities across 10 states, including Georgetown University, University of Delaware, Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, James Madison University, and UMBC.

Tauro is a double major in Dance and Biomedical Sciences. For the last year she has been conducting research on DinB, a protein involved in DNA translesion synthesis, under the supervision of Dr. Benedetta Sampoli Benitez, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She will present a more complete set of results at the 2018 Experimental Biology meeting in San Diego, CA next April.